Biography

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Ed Welburn page on 26 May 2024, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Edward Thomas Welburn Jr. is an automobile designer and former General Motors' Vice President of Global Design, a role in which he served from 2003 to 2016 and the same position that Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell once held. To date, Welburn still holds the distinction of having been the highest-ranking Black-American in the global automotive industry. He has overseen the development of recent GM products, such as the Chevrolet Corvette, Cadillac Escalade and Chevrolet Camaro. Welburn has overseen groundbreaking concepts such as:the Oldsmobile Aerotech, Cadillac Ciel, and Buick Avista.

Welburn was also the lead GM designer on the Chaparral 2X Vision GT, a concept car designed for the video game Gran Turismo 6. The car features 4-wheel steer and active aerodynamics, claimed to be similar to a wingsuit, and was made available in December 2014.

Welburn studied design, sculpture, and painting at Howard University’s School of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. He communicated with General Motors during his years at Howard, which led to an internship at GM Design after his junior year in 1971. He earned his bachelor's degree from Howard in 1972 and was invited to return to his alma mater on May 7, 2016 to give a commencement speech to graduates of the College of Fine Arts.

Welburn's first peek behind the curtain of General Motors Design was during his college internship in 1971. One year later, he became the first Black American hired to design GM vehicles. He spent his entire design career at GM, where he worked in a variety of studios on a diverse list of vehicles, and he became the highest-ranking Black American in the automotive industry as the first-ever Vice President, GM Global Design — one of seven to have held the position, including Harley Earl, Bill Mitchell, Irv Rybicki, Chuck Jordan, Wayne Cherry, and Michael Simcoe.

After announcing his retirement, he launched The Welburn Group, a design consultancy.

Documents

Date	Document	Details
9 June 1981 grant date	Vehicle Wheel United States Patent D259,484	Patent ( PDF) 170KB · 3 pages Inventors: Edward T. Welburn Company: General Motors Topic: Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme